memo

I remember it rained all day, the day we met. Heavy unforgiving drops smacking on the sidewalk. I thought about sandbags and life-rafts. I sagged under the awning nursing on my rain speckled cigarette, waiting for it to stop. I had rain all over my face, or maybe I was crying. Then like a goddess, on a chrome chariot, you rode up splashing, cracked a smile at me and said, “I love this weather.” I smoked another cigarette while watching you chain the polished bicycle to a lamppost. When you spun around, your long coat swooped out, and I was sure you had wings. I don’t remember the first thing I said to you, only what I was thinking, “who is this person?”

You remember it another way, the rain had ceased and an October sun sparkled on wet pavement, the dark clouds fled to the eastern horizon, chased away. You say you weren’t wearing a coat, okay, but I don’t remember a gorilla suit, you'd think I would. You also remember that I was inside the coffee shop, sunk into a couch with my back to the window, perhaps bullshitting with a mutual friend, Adam. You say you brought your bike inside, because that morning you had forgotten your lock, that when you first saw me, I wasn’t looking back, or all that,  You remember it was a few days later, when the sun was hot my cheeks, that I first spoke to you, “I love this weather.”

Or was it you, that loved the sun, and I the rain?

Republic

At the end of time

the sons of Plato and Socrates

howled from wooden chairs

on a chain smoked porch

sipped on steelheads

pondering the patterns of space and time

new-age grease monkeys

getting dirty with the quantum mechanics

of love, lust and destiny

purpose? we demand it.

keep painting the cave walls

Don’t Go

They once laughed all the way to the lawn and garden section,

a Nozzle for the Hozzle,

my mother took me to the beach,

my father took me to the mountains,

this was the way of things

they both came to this valley for different reasons

I was raised in the city

as if it were neutral ground

dad drove his datsun to the dale of trout

a brown thing resistant to shine

I picked at the exposed foam of the seats

like when one mindlessly plucks grass

his bong wedged between the seat and emergency brake

the highway whisked by through a hole in the floor

poles, lures, gaffs rattled in the trunk

the sandy river bank

two hundred year old ash

swallowed my feet at the shore

I dug a worm out of the Styrofoam cup

dad said it is too big for the hook

so I pulled it apart, guts ruptured

I saw my family in the palms of little hands, torn.

Fuddy-duddy old man mumbles of women

being like buses

that there is always another one coming

I caught a fish, an ugly bottom feeder,

dad said to throw it back

I couldn’t get the hook out

it saddened me to see it float away—belly up

dad read his westerns

and we rode off towards the sunset

towards home and the shores

of my mother’s bipolar tide pools

rain falling faster than wiper blades could manage

we entered the storm

I waved goodbye

and swung my string of fish over my shoulder

skipped up the stairs

silent empty rooms searched

her room was the last one

Mom. Mom? Where are you mother?

powder blue cheeks

violet lips—belly up,  

head dangling off the side of the bed

eyes looking at nothing

floor littered with spilt pills and crumbled notes

how will the moon feel when the earth dies?

I ran, down, out, into the parking

turning the corner to see

his datsun at the end of the drive

turn signal on

I shouted and waved

frantic child arms at his rearview mirror

Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go.

Rust

When I was 10, the girl working at Burger King, told me she liked my eyes; that I was going to be a real lady killer. I was offended. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I can’t eat artificial grape anything without gagging and recalling a weekend in high school, where I vomited up purple popcorn and grape Maddog 20/20 out of my nose. There is a right way to make a pizza. I don’t think anyone in America understands that. When asked if I prefer Coke over Pepsi, I said I preferred opium. Growing up, I wanted to be a Jedi knight, I still do, does that mean that I have yet to grow up? I like passive verbs when talking about violence. I like violent verbs when talking about passion. My sense of humor is in direct proportion to my rage. I spent a week riding a greyhound bus, with my one year old, ear-infected, won’t stop crying, son on my lap. I thought about leaving him in a restroom in Tennessee. I never told him that. But, I did tell him I had to beg his mother not abort him.

Say Thank You

Always remember everything
changing fleeting temporary
immensely precious
playing in the concrete
rivers and pools
the fountains of four-courts
my 8 year old and his smile of sunshine
below a mohawk of light beams
we both were wet and needing not
that is the beaded water of perfection
that moment will never be unmade
it may be winter now
my chest cancering in on itself
but I know where heaven is
it is in a photograph
of a place
I have already been
thank you.

spun

I am not the spider that spun this web.

Nor am I the fly that trembles the lines. 

I am not the eternal light-post, 

or the ancient cedar that hold tether to the end of time. 

I wish I was. 

I could have been the silver globs of water 

that gemmed the seams and cross-sections.

I could have been the field, 

wind in me, crisp in morning. 

I wish I was the youthful sun. 

but I am not.

I could have been the Living River. 

I was once a creek. 

But that was only potential.   

I am not my mother’s forest gone to rest, forgotten. 

I am not my father’s climber of mountains.

I am the man swatting at air, 

clumsy in my fuzzy logic, 

buffoon, 

pulling silk threads from my hair, 

oblivious the beautiful metaphor. 

I am cock.

I am the apocalypse.

of little spider’s webs.

Stress

Any organism that is under stress

or pressure from its environment,

and it has the capability to adapt

will become intelligent.

That’s what some scientist says about life on other planets.

I took it personally.

the story of my life

stress, adapt, epiphany, repeat.

My life has been extremely painful, but I have enjoyed living

Before the shithole foster homes,

there was vanilla ice and top ramen,

bars on windows

conditional love is a psych-trip

cockroaches, pet rats, bananas crammed into the sink

overflowing, a demonic thing awakens, toddler gets purple legs

I called the police from a phone booth on the corner

it was a tall world,

they hide their drugs in my little brother’s crib

I told the lady in the phone

my rats died in the bathtub, all five of them,

swimming in circles, unable to adapt